Ambergate (22 page)

A terrible weight of oppression and helplessness descended on me. I was back, and there was no escape.

It was a tall house, and the girls’ dormitory on the third floor was the first lighted room I came to. In the yellow glow
of the oil lamps, Mistress Slyde was walking around the two long rows of low iron bedsteads, her shadow, an elongated stick
figure, jerking along the walls. In the beds lay two dozen or more little girls; in some, two or three shared together. Though
the shutterless windows were open to the night, there was a smell of sickness and stale urine in the cold room.

As I came in, their heads turned toward me, and a thin murmur arose, abruptly cut off when Mistress Slyde beat her long ruler
on the floor. The children’s hands fluttered on the sparse coverlets like so many trapped birds; their faces were wan and
full of fear.

I stepped past the filthy prayer mats and quickly bowed my head to the wooden Eagle head that was fixed to the near wall.
“You wanted me, Mistress Slyde?”

She pointed with her ruler to an empty bed by the door. “You will sleep there, 102. You can get the children up in the morning,
six of the clock. Make sure they say their prayers, lest any should die before evening. They must strip their beds and fasten
their clothes properly before breakfast.” She came closer and frowned down at me. “You will keep good order, 102. Report to
me any misdemeanors, and the child responsible will be punished. So will you, if I hear too much noise. Understood?”

I nodded dumbly. The children gazed at me, their eyes dull. Someone was whimpering very quietly.

“From seven in the morning until six in the evening they work in the factory close by, spinning flax. You will remember the
place, no doubt.”

I bit my lip, and again I nodded.

“You will clear the breakfast dishes when they have left, and do their laundry. I will give you further instructions then.
Any questions?”

The order of the day hadn’t changed since I’d been there. Without thinking I blurted out, “Do they still get no time to play?”

“One day a year is for play, that is plenty,” snapped Mistress Slyde. She gave me an angry, measuring look. “There is no time
for such trifles. Play only encourages bad behavior.” She looked around at the rows of beds.

“Speaking of bad behavior, where is the child who was silent at Devotion tonight?”

No one made a sound. Even the coughing and snuffling stopped.

“Where is she?” Mistress Slyde began to go slowly from bed to bed, tapping the ruler against her lanky flank as she stared
down at each child. She watched their eyes.

“I thought so! You again!” In triumph she wrenched the coverlet off a cowering child in a threadbare nightgown, and nodded
at me brusquely. “Ring for Crumplin and Doggett. I need more help with this.”

The little girl clasped her arms about her thin chest in a feeble attempt to protect herself; her eyes were terrified, enormous
in her starving face. I could see the red bites of bedbugs on her forearms and bare feet. She began to wheeze: there was a
sound like the crackle of parchment in her chest.

I went to the door and picked up the bell with a heavy heart. Mistress Crumplin and Dog arrived after some long moments, during
which no one moved or breathed, and the child’s crackling went on and on.

I was sure Mistress Slyde would hit the little girl with the ruler. I felt sick.

“This ungodly child must be pressed,” said Mistress Slyde. “We must press the wickedness out of her.”

Mistress Crumplin and Doggett went forward eagerly enough. They knew what she meant; it had happened before.

Mistress Crumplin’s face was red, her lace cap awry, but Mistress Slyde did not notice; she was too intent on the child’s
punishment. She had begun to breathe heavily. A
hand clasped her amulet. She bowed to the Eagle and muttered something.

The three of them moved very swiftly.

They went to the spare iron bedstead by the door and tugged off the filthy bedding, all but the horsehair mattress. They lifted
the bedstead and carried it over to the little girl’s bed, where they set it down over her like a prison. The base, with the
mattress sagging through, almost touched her frightened face. Then they fetched the bedding—the dirty sheets and coverlets—and
draped it so that it all hung down over the sides.

I could see her no more, but I heard the
crump, crump
in her chest.

I thought of the bedbugs running in the darkness around her, crawling on her face, her hair. “Oh, please,” I cried, and started
forward. “She’ll suffocate!”

They ignored me. Instead, they heaved themselves up and sat on the top of the bedstead. They began to drum the heels of their
boots against the iron bars. Their combined weight made the bed sink right down on the one beneath.

Its mattress must be pressing against the little girl’s face and body
, I thought.
She won’t be able to move in the darkness and din
.

Mistress Slyde’s mouth was a hard line; her eyes had the gleam of madness in the oil-light. I could not bear to look at Mistress
Crumplin and Doggett, so complicit in her cruelty.

I could do nothing, and I hated myself for it. I stood, twisting my hands together, and watched helplessly while the terrible
rhythm of their beating heels went on and on and on.

At last it was over. The two women and Dog had extinguished the oil lamps and left, leaving me with the candle stub.

“Help me!” I whispered to the children. “We must lift the bed off.”

No one moved. Frightened eyes gazed at me. I could hear no sound from the lower bed.

“Quickly!”

The panic in my voice roused them at last.

It took several of the strongest and biggest girls to help me lift that iron monster off the little child below. Her lips
and closed eyelids were tinged blue, but she was breathing, for I could hear the crumple in her chest.

We wrapped her in a blanket and carried her to the window, where the night air was blowing in, damp but mild. I began to rock
her in my arms; I held my warm cheek against hers. “Wake up,” I breathed. “You’re safe now.”

And then I began to sing softly to her, an old nursery rhyme I think it was, about the “lily-white boys” who are the sweeps’
climbing-boys. She opened her eyes, and suddenly smiled, as if she’d gone to heaven.

And so I continued singing, and when I looked around they were all creeping closer to crouch in a circle around me—all the
little girls. The smallest one laid her head on my arm.

“Will you sing to us every night?” she asked at the end of the song.

What could I say? I was too choked up to answer; I tried to smile.

“Tell us a story,” whispered the little child in my arms. “Make it about me.”

I thought awhile. Then a story came into my head that the woman in the cellar would tell to me, and this was the bareness
of it, without any of the whys and wherefores I put in.

“Once there was a great city, where the people were very unhappy because they worked so hard and didn’t have enough to eat.
They’d heard of a gate that stood at the entrance to a land of plenty, where everyone had all the food they wanted and were
happy forever. The gate was like a tree, with beautiful golden branches from which amber stones hung like fruit.

“One day they found it, as you do if you look hard enough for something. They began to pass through—all the mothers and fathers
and little children—and then they shut the amber gate carefully behind them.

“But one little orphan girl hadn’t passed through. She was the last, too small to keep up. She could hear the footsteps of
the people fading away beyond the gate, and she wept bitterly. Then she saw that she was small enough to squeeze between the
golden branches.”

“So she reached the land of plenty too?” said the child I held.

“She did, indeed,” I said.

“And that little girl is me,” she said, smiling.

I sang them another song, then I tucked them all into bed.
The little girl touched my hand when I came to her. “There was once an amber gate in the Capital, you know—like the one in
your story—but it’s lost.”

“Perhaps one day it will be found again too,” I whispered. I stroked the hair from her face. “What is your name?”

“I don’t have one.”

“No more do I.”

She clutched my fingers. “Will the Eagle forgive me for not saying my prayers? He frightens me. The words stop in my mouth.”

I looked over at the dark head jutting from the wall. “He’s the Almighty,” I said, at a loss. I kept my voice low in case
He should hear. “He’s made by man to look frightening to make sure we’re good.”

I had to bend my head to hear what she said.

“When I look in His face, there is no love there.”

Next morning, after a breakfast of thin oatmeal, Mistress Slyde marched the children out in a sickly troop to the clothing
factory. I collected the wet sheets from the beds and took them in a basket down to the kitchen, where Doggett eyed the soaking,
stinking pile with satisfaction.

“That was my job before you came,” she remarked.

I had nothing to say to her.

I mixed boiling water with vinegar in a vast pan and put the lot in to soak, pushing them well down beneath the surface
with a wooden prod. The kitchen was full of steam. Doggett lounged on the table, swinging her heels while she watched me.

“Where is Mistress Crumplin?” I asked at last, irritated by her idleness.

“Gone to market,” said Doggett. She winked at me through the steam. “Had a hard time of it, gettin’ her up this mornin’.”

I stared at her. “You’re not frightened of her anymore, are you, Dog? You were once.”

“Tell you what, Scuff, I despise her now. Why, Miss Jennet was a far finer housekeeper and kept me to the mark. I respected
her.”

“You should go back to Murkmere, Dog,” I said. “Aggie was fond of you, I do believe it.” I added, “Maybe you will find your
heart again there.”

She didn’t meet my eyes. “Mebbe I will,” she muttered, then, “What about you? Will you stay here awhile?”

I stirred the sheets. “I think so. The children…”

She shook her head. “If you makes ‘em love you, you won’t be doin’ ‘em no favors.”

“I can at least protect them!”

She climbed off the table and came over to me, fiddling with the ties of her apron. “I know what you must think of me. We
do things here we’d not do in better places. If I don’t do what that cow wants, I’ll be out on my ear with not a scathin’
to my name.”

“But if we don’t stand up to her, nothing will ever get better,” I said. “We could do it together.”

“And both be thrown out into the streets? I’m not riskin’
my position, I’m tellin’ you. As for the children, you stop thinkin’ of them as human after a while. The drudgery makes you
hate ‘em in the end. They’re such pathetic scraps and there’s always more where they come from, like insects.”

“I was like them once,” I said quietly.

Doggett stared at me and had opened her mouth to speak when a knocking sounded above us. She frowned.

“Tradesman. Always comin’ to the front door instead of goin’ ’round the back. I’ll go up.”

I caught her arm. “It may be soldiers, Dog!”

“Nah, why should they think you’re here—you said it yourself.”

She had gone. I stood in the middle of the kitchen, chewing my lip.

But it was Shadow she brought back down with her, Shadow with Mister Plush in his arms, like a baleful velvet cushion.

“This rapscallion says he wants you.” She glared at him suspiciously.

Shadow was unabashed, but I could see he was in a state of agitation that had nothing to do with her. He was jittering about
from foot to foot, brimful of something, ready to burst with it.

I looked at him bitterly. “I know him, Dog. He must have followed me here last night. I thought of him as a friend, till he
helped in the selling of me.”

“Mr. Butley made me, Miss!” said Shadow earnestly, his most innocent expression on his face. “He threatened me
with the ship’s lash if I didn’t. If he finds out I’m here, I’ll get it, sure enough. That’s why I must be quick.”

Doggett brought her face down to his. “Spit it out then, you little varmint. Stop clutterin’ up our kitchen.”

“There are two men lookin’ for you, Miss Scuff!”

Immediately a cold hand seized hold of my heart.

“Men?”

“I’ve come to warn you. They came at first light this morning and asked to see the skipper, Mr. Butley. He told ‘em he’d seen
the number on your arm. It’s you they’re lookin’ for, certain sure. They said immediate about searchin’ the Orphans’ Homes—I
was there, listenin’ in. I knew you were here, ‘cos I’d followed you, but I said nothing. My lips was stuck fast together.
I said I knew nothin’, that you was a good woman and a good cook. That whatever you’d done couldn’t ‘ave been so very wicked.”
He looked at me expectantly.

“Thank you, Shadow,” I said faintly.

“I wanted to protect you, see? You must leave now, hide someplace.” He looked up at me, wide-eyed through his matted hair.
The cat in his arms stared at me too, unblinking. “You are my friend, Miss. I said so, didn’t I?”